


your hands were making artifacts (in the corner of my mind)

by moonbeatblues



Series: you look too good (to leave bare) [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, hehe hoohoo, i keep rewatching that little yashter exchange, the Moments this ep.....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:00:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22939057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: they spend a long time on sketches— jester tearing out pages of her notebook, yasha showing her the dried flowers pressed between her notebook pages, and beau sitting up to watch them, looking over their shoulders and making appraising sounds as the spell wears off and she can see properly again.“are you sure you want to do this tonight?” jester’s rifling around in her bag for the supplies, and pops back up to look at yasha. “it’ll take a long time.”“yes,” yasha says. “i have wanted this for a while.”(yasha takes jester up on the offer of a tattoo)
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Jester Lavorre/Yasha
Series: you look too good (to leave bare) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648570
Comments: 11
Kudos: 173





	your hands were making artifacts (in the corner of my mind)

**Author's Note:**

> hm. i seem to write a lot about jester giving beau and yasha tattoos. surely this has nothing to do with me.
> 
> title is from mary by big thief-- just. dreamy.

“would you?”

“hmm?”

they’re out on the deck, still in the dresses jester had picked out for them. below, caleb is still talking to essek— or making out, or something, she doesn’t want to intrude— and fjord and beau and caduceus are making dinner or speaking with orly or, in beau’s case, just sort of waiting for caduceus’s spell to wear off, probably lying in their bed and staring at whatever ethereal things are floating by on the ceiling and maybe drooling a little.

(she’d talked in infernal, you know, when she’d sidled up to jester to point out which of the party-goers had illusions on. had sidled up in the suit jester is almost mad at herself for picking, because _gods_ does beau look good in it, put her hand on the small of jester’s back, on the cutout in her dress fabric so they were skin-to-skin and whispered to her in infernal.

she wonders if beau would learn infernal if she asked her to, like she had with undercommon. jester would just— she just really wants to hear it again, okay? beau’s tongue curling around old fiendish syllables, against her ear, soft and sweet a little with champagne.)

“give me a tattoo. on my bicep.”

“oh!”

yasha has a funny habit of finishing conversations from a while ago, just picking up the frayed thread where it’d been cut to allow for something else and carrying on as though it had just happened.

“of course!”

her cheeks feel a little hot as she looks at yasha— and _gods_ , did she really have to pick out such nice things for everyone to wear? yasha looks so lovely, lit by the quay’s hanging lanterns, someone so tall and imposing now relaxed, if a little awkward, against the rail. the gown just sort of spills down her like dark water, and she can see the pale expanse of her neck, her shoulders, scarred over but otherwise bare, can imagine her own handiwork crawling across her arm, towards her throat. tries to ignore the implications of what the thread of that past conversation had entailed.

—

“hey, jes,” beau greets her sleepily, head still tipped to the ceiling like jester thought she’d be, and sits up a little when her eyes roll to the both of them in the door, the easiness that pervades their life together retracting to include another. her personality shrinking from the room, growing a little more awkward. “yasha.”

“hey, beau,” she says, and pushes through the thought that it’s _her_ that beau feels the safest around, even if she flirts with yasha and kissed keg and also reani, her and no one else. “i’m going to give yasha a tattoo!”

“yes,” yasha agrees. “is that alright?”

“yeah, uh—” and beau shifts so she’s sitting against the headboard, closer to the wall. “do you need the whole bed?”

“no, this is fine,” jester says, breezily, and smooths out the sheets. “you can probably sleep through it, even, i’m sure yasha will be quiet.”

“i’m good at it. dealing with pain, that is,” and there is so much behind that statement, in that moment, that it’s like it freezes the air solid between them.

and then jester clears her throat. “okay! what do you think you want, yasha?”

beau shifts more as jester and yasha talk, watching them lazily. tongues has worn off, and jester’s a little sad about it— she wonders if yasha heard her speak in celestial. that’s such a pretty language, too, she thinks, like bells. maybe beau would want to learn it instead, she thinks, if yasha likes it, and she shoves the little anxious tickle down.

yasha tells her that she wants flowers, all the kinds that she’s found, so far. just in black and white, stems and leaves and blooms all the way down to her elbow.

“that is,” she reaches for yasha’s hand, “ _so_ pretty, yasha, just— are you sure you want me to do it? orly’s here, he could give you a magical one that will make you even stronger, and he’s done a lot more tattoos than me, and it’s pretty big—”

“no,” yasha says, and turns her hand so her fingers interlace with jester’s. “i want you to do it, if that’s okay. if it’s you, there will be enough magic.”

“oh,” jester squeaks. “okay.”

—

they spend a long time on sketches— jester tearing out pages of her notebook, yasha showing her the dried flowers pressed between her notebook pages, and beau sitting up to watch them, looking over their shoulders and making appraising sounds as the spell wears off and she can see properly again.

“are you sure you want to do this tonight?” jester’s rifling around in her bag for the supplies, and pops back up to look at yasha. “it’ll take a long time.”

“yes,” yasha says. “i have wanted this for a while.”

_she’s so good at that_ , jester thinks, ducking down to root in her bag for ink and needles again, rattling people loose like that with such simple words. _is this what beau feels?_ she thinks, and fondness and confusion and jealousy, maybe, sift together and apart in her head until she feels lost.

she sits yasha on the edge of their bed, with beau still watching from behind her, and with the stencil laid out properly, starts.

—

yasha says nothing the whole time except for when jester or beau ask her something, doesn’t even wince, just looks down at her hands and over at jester’s curiously. it’s mostly quiet, and the combination of yasha and beau’s eyes on her the whole time feels almost too much.

outside, she can hear caleb come down the hall, finished talking to essek, can hear him talking quietly with nott before they head off to their room for the night— she wonders about what nott said, earlier to caleb about being in love with him, about how she’d kissed him the first time they’d tried the spell, and wonders just how confused caleb must be. later, fjord and caduceus meet outside their room to talk in low voices before they, too, go to bed, and it’s once it’s totally quiet outside that she realizes just how late it must be. but she’s halfway done and yasha’s being so good, so much better than she and beau and nott were for orly, so she puts the thought aside.

when it’s done, they don’t have much time to look at it, either— there’s blood, of course, and she needs to make a compress to put on for tonight, but she catches little glimpses of it and pride fills her so fast her chest feels like a balloon, or a flag full of wind.

“thank you, jester,” yasha says, soft, while she’s finishing with the compress.

“you didn’t even see it yet!” she protests, doesn’t look yasha in the face.

“i don’t need to. i know it’s beautiful.”

“yeah. everything you draw is beautiful,” beau drawls from behind her, kept quiet for a long time and seeming quite sleepy, now, says it like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t make jester’s already fluttery heart start something frenzied, “me next.”

and she laughs at that, cleans and packs up her supplies, but later, when they’re all curled together— yasha sleeps with them, now, usually, and jester says she wants to keep an eye on the tattoo, make sure yasha doesn’t roll on it— she thinks about sitting in the xhorhaus, in the happy room with the thin light of the gallimaufry district’s lamps through the window, or in their room again, quiet and still in the afternoon, everyone else downstairs or out, and tattooing flowers onto beau’s back, or ribs, flowers or plants or words.

she thinks about infernal, about writing things on beau’s skin in clear black letters, things she wants to say, things she calls beau in her head because they’re what she thinks before the rest of her tries to ask why she thinks them.

things beau can’t read, yet, but maybe that she wants to, that she’d want to know how if she knew jester wanted her to.

_vyrrminek_ — lovely. _drezjyny_ — dearest.

(the translation’s different, okay?)

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @seafleece on tumblr!! come say hello


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